Document Type

Conference Proceeding

Publication Date

9-2008

Abstract

Despite often being mislabeled as a 'stream-of-consciousness' narrative, recent archival discoveries and theoretical examinations have revealed the Penelope episode of James Joyce's Ulysses to be as scrupulously arranged as the rest of the novel. Over the course of the day, Leopold Bloom's fantasies recast the Odyssean homecoming as a modern epic. But they represent only half of the story, only half of the conflicted desires that have sundered the Bloom's marriage bed. I propose that the unconscious desires that speak through the fantasy life of Molly Bloom engage in the same Odyssean process of reclaiming and rebuilding the home visible in the fantasies of her husband, and that the telos of this epic restoration centers, for Molly as well as Leopold, on the same fantastic subject: Stephen qua Rudy.

Comments

Presented at Graduate English Association New Voices Conference 2008, pp. 1-12.

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